Welcome to spring! More evidence the Biden clan lied under oath, lots of illegal alien news, Ukraine hits more Russian oil refineries, and BlackRock and Planet Fitness enjoy the consequences of getting woke. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
In his opening statement before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski publicly accused the first son and his uncle, Jim Biden, of lying under oath about the nature of their business dealings with Chinese conglomerate CEFC.
Bobulinski is testifying on Wednesday about the Biden family’s foreign business dealings, the subject of the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. He testified behind closed doors last month and vividly recalled meeting Hunter, Joe, and James Biden in May 2017 to discuss a proposed joint venture with CEFC.
Bobulinski cited three examples of alleged perjury from Hunter Biden’s sworn testimony last month, accusing Hunter of lying about: the timeline of his business relationship with CEFC, his father’s interactions with his business associates, and the threatening text he sent a Chinese businessman in which he demanded payment and said he was sitting next to his father.
“Hunter Biden gave his transcribed interview to the House Oversight Committee on February 28 and lied throughout his testimony,” Bobulinski said in his written testimony.
Hunter Biden said his work for CEFC began with a retainer in 2017. However, Bobulinski insists, based on conversations he said he had with Hunter, that the Biden business relationship with CEFC goes back further, possibly to Joe Biden’s time as vice president.
Hunter Biden claimed his father never interacted with his son’s business partners and repeatedly denied his father’s involvement in those dealings. However, Hunter Biden confirmed Joe Biden met Bobulinski and multiple foreign business partners, and spoke to business associates on speakerphone.
James Biden denied in his closed-door testimony that he attended that May 2017 meeting, contradicting Hunter’s sworn testimony.
“The sole reason Hunter wanted me to meet his father was because I was the CEO of SinoHawk, the Bidens’ partnership with CEFC. I was a business associate. In his transcript, Hunter confirms that that meeting with Joe took place and incriminates his Uncle Jim for perjury by confirming it,” Bobulinski’s statement reads.
In his written testimony and the opening statement he delivered, Bobulinski also accuses Hunter of lying about the details of a text he sent to a Chinese business associate in July 2017 where he appeared to leverage his father’s influence. Hunter Biden testified that he was embarrassed by the text and claimed he sent it to the wrong Chinese business partner, a person not connected to CEFC.
“He leveraged his father’s presence next to him in that infamous text to strongarm CEFC into paying Hunter immediately,” Bobulinski said.
In March 2017, Hunter Biden’s then-business partner Rob Walker received a $3 million payment from State Energy HK, an account linked to CEFC.
Walker distributed roughly $1 million of the State Energy HK funds to bank accounts linked to Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden family, bank records show. The $3 million wire to Walker took place after Hunter Biden and his business associates held meetings with CEFC and helped explore business deals, according to Walker’s testimony and Hunter Biden’s federal tax indictment. Joe Biden’s vice presidency concluded only weeks before the State Energy HK payment came in.
Bobulinski also accused James Biden of lying under oath about the details of his involvement with Bobulinski and CEFC.
Testifying behind closed doors last month, James Biden repeatedly denied meeting Bobulinski, contradicting the testimony given by Bobulinski and Hunter Biden, according to a transcript of his testimony. Despite being shown exhibits to the contrary, James Biden doubled down on his denial that the May 2017 meeting with Bobulinski and Joe and Hunter Biden took place. Likewise, James Biden denied signing any agreement to get into business with Bobulinski through Oneida Holdings, a holding company created for the CEFC proposal.
When presented with a signed copy of the Oneida agreement, James Biden said he could not recall being part of the Oneida arrangement. The CEFC proposal involving Bobulinski fell apart, and the Bidens entered a separate joint venture with CEFC called Hudson West III to help CEFC explore U.S. energy deals.
“There are many other examples of Hunter’s and Jim’s lies, which I am happy to discuss during my testimony here today, and I hope this Committee will hold them accountable for their perjury before you,” Bobulinski’s written statement adds. When questioned by Republican lawmakers, Bobulinski repeated his accusations Hunter and James Biden committed perjury during their closed-door testimonies last month.
Alongside Bobulinski, imprisoned former Biden associate Jason Galanis is testifying virtually about the business enterprise he worked on with Hunter Biden and other business partners. Galanis’ opening statement on Wednesday mirrors private testimony in which he claimed Joe Biden helped his son finalize deals with Chinese and Russian business partners.
“The entire value-add of Hunter Biden to our business was his family name and his access to his father, Vice President Joe Biden,” Galanis testified. He believes he is risking his safety to testify because of alleged retaliation by the Justice Department during his time in prison for participating in a fraudulent bond scheme.
Bobulinski’s testimony will be no surprise to regular BattleSwarm readers following the scandal.
I’ll confine myself to one typical example, although many could be cited. On page 55 of the transcript, Hur asks Biden in what workspaces he kept documents at the vice president’s residence (the Naval Observatory); Biden’s response runs seven pages — although it was not a sensible response to the very simple question asked.
The president began by recounting that “I was the guy who wrote the Violence Against Women Act”; that agriculture is “a $4 billion industry in Delaware and the Delmarva peninsula”; that in a law-school torts class he was applauded for speaking ten minutes about a case he had not read; that “to make a long story short” he got a job out of law school at a firm in Delaware; and that “to make a long story not quite so long” he participated in a case while he was waiting for his bar results involving “this poor kid [who was] down a hundred-foot vessel, chimney, scraping the hydrogen bubbles off of the inside” but “was wearing the wrong pants, wrong jeans, and he —a spark caught fire and got caught in the containment vessel and he lost part of his penis and one of his testicles and he was 23 years old.” The senior partner told Biden to write a memo supporting a motion to dismiss the case, “and son of a bitch, it prevailed,” whereupon Biden thought “son of a bitch I’m in the wrong business, I’m not made for this.”
Thereupon, the senior partner invited him to go to the Wilmington Club, where “no blacks, Catholics are allowed — have been allowed to be members. The DuPont family name.” (Biden elsewhere in the seven pages repeatedly refers to the DuPont family, whom he describes as “Rockefeller Republicans” highly influential in Delaware.) Biden recalled being so taken aback by the Wilmington Club invitation that, in “the only time I ever lied that I can remember looking somebody in the eye,” he made up a story that his father was coming to visit that day. Then he immediately walked through “the basement on a public building and walked in with a guy named Frank and I said I want a job as a public defender.” This began “what got me — I had been involved in the civil-rights movement. That got me deeply involved in trying to reform the Democratic Party, which was a southern Democratic Party. We were a slave state by law.”
“And the whole point of telling you all this,” he continued, “is that I had a lot of material that I kept notes on” about the Democratic Party. And at that point, when he was 26 or 27 years old, Biden elaborated, “I went to work part time for a criminal-defense firm mainly, a real estate — there were five people. And so I was no longer a public defender. . . .” Then “one thing led to another” and Biden joined a group seeking to reform the Democratic Party. Even though he was young, they wanted him to run for the state senate. But he wanted to start his own law firm instead. “So to make a long story short,” he ended up running for county council, but “wanted to be sure that I was going to lose,” so he ran in a district that no Democrat had ever won. “And I won it. And next thing you know, I’m in a tough position. My generic point was that there was a lot of material that I had amassed that I wanted to save. I probably still have it somewhere. And so that stuff would travel wherever the hell I was.”
At that point, mercifully, Hur interjected, “trying to steer us back to the end of your vice presidency.”
To repeat, what I’ve outlined above comes from a single, uninterrupted, utterly non-responsive answer to a question about where Biden kept documents while living in the Naval Observatory circa 2016.
I would say that Grandpa Simpson is running the country, except it’s his Obama-retread aides who are doing that, and Grandpa Simpson is markedly more focused and coherent than Slow Joe is now. (Hat tip: Powerline.)
A senior official with United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) revealed Wednesday that CBP agents in El Paso arrested a man for attempting to enter the country illegally, and a further search led to the discovery of gang connections and alarming images contained on the man’s phone.
CBP Chief Jason Owens announced the arrest on social media, saying the man was from Colombia and shared images of tattoos that connect him with the Clan Del Gulfo (CDG) cartel.
A federal law, Section 922 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, bars illegal immigrants from carrying guns or ammunition. Prosecutors charged Heriberto Carbajal-Flores, the illegal alien, in 2020 after he was found in Chicago carrying a semi-automatic pistol despite “knowing he was an alien illegally and unlawfully in the United States.”
U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman rejected two motions to dismiss, but the third motion, based on a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, triggered the dismissal of the case on March 8.
“The noncitizen possession statute, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(5), violates the Second Amendment as applied to Carbajal-Flores,” Judge Coleman, appointed under President Barack Obama, wrote in her 8-page ruling. “Thus, the court grants Carbajal-Flores’ motion to dismiss.”
“Tyson closed down a pork plant in Iowa to hire ‘asylum seekers’ in New York. Tyson Foods just axed 1,200 jobs in Perry, Iowa, a town of just a few thousand people, and have moved those jobs, as well as others, to places like New York where they know there are ‘asylum seekers’ ready to replace American workers.”
The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it will impose the strictest vehicle-emissions regulations ever enacted as part of an effort to push the American car industry toward electric vehicles.
The emissions standards, which will cover light-duty vehicles — cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks — are set to apply to models produced from “2027 through 2032 and beyond,” the Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement.
The new rules set targets for the number of electric models produced in the United States as a percentage of all light-duty vehicles created each year. For instance, in 2030, hitting the EPA’s new targets would require somewhere between 31 percent and 44 percent of new cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks to be fully electric, with the exact percentage depending on the amount of emissions from other vehicles.
Though the regulations announced Wednesday are the strictest in the country’s history, they are a step back from the EPA’s April 2023 proposal, at least in terms of the rollout speed. While the target in 2032 is still for carbon emissions to be cut in half from the total produced by cars that went on sale in 2026, the shift will be more gradual than the changes the administration proposed last year and the targets in the earlier years easier to meet.
Another difference is the inclusion of hybrid vehicles. The April 2023 proposal called for two-thirds of cars sold in 2032 to be electric, but the new regulations amend that number to 56 percent of cars sold being electric and another 13 percent hybrid.
The electric car market is already saturated and EV sales are falling. Americans don’t want them, so the Biden administration is going to punish (and possibly destroy) the American car industry in their relentless pursuit of green graft.
“Texas School Fund Divests $8.5 Billion From BlackRock Over Anti-energy Policies. State Board of Education Chairman Aaron Kinsey said BlackRock was not in compliance with new legislation that prohibits state funds from being given to organizations that boycott energy companies.” Good. BlackRock’s “Environmental Social Governance” is bad for investors and bad for America.
Bad news: Still unemployed. Good news: Applied/submitted for lots of jobs.
Good news: My dog’s operation was a success! Bad news: The lump was cancerous. Good news: The cancer was a Stage 1 soft tissue melanoma, which is the lowest level and has little chance of recurrence.
Also: Today is Friday the 13th. Also, a Hamas leader has declared a “Day of Jihad.
At the time, Maisy, now 22, was in her final year of high school. She and her two older sisters, along with Joe Biden and First Lady Jill, had tried to stage an intervention just weeks earlier at the President’s Delaware home to get Hunter to go back to rehab.
He promised to go, but instead ended up smoking crack in a hotel, he confessed in his 2021 memoir, Beautiful Things.
Emails and messages from his laptop show money he took from Maisy’s educational savings account went in part to paying various suspected prostitutes who visited him at hotels in the following days, his Porsche 911 car loan, sex webcam subscription fees, and other personal expenses.
Hunter’s assistant Katie Dodge plaintively emailed him on December 28 that year that he had University of Pennsylvania tuition bills of $27,945 due (likely for his eldest daughter, Naomi), a $1,700 payment for his Porsche, $4,244.70 for Maisy’s high school Sidwell Friends, her $3,000 paycheck and $1,000 for another employee.
Hunter tersely told Dodge to pay for the Porsche and his health insurance, but that she would only be getting half her paycheck – and that he would ‘deal with tuitions when time comes.’
Following reports of Syria launching missiles at northern Israel, Israel hit the country’s two main international airports, “in the capital of Damascus and Aleppo in the north. It happened while an Iranian plane was inbound.” Also, the number of Americans killed by Hamas is now up to 27.
A day late, a shekel short: “Israel Loosens Strict Gun Control Laws To Arm ‘As Many Citizens As Possible.'” Benjamin Netanyahu and the entire Israeli political establishment deserve a good measure of blame for not doing this much sooner.
Speaking of guns in Gaza evidently Hamas now have a lot of rifles chambered in 5.56 NATO thanks to the Biden Administration’s abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Steve Scalise drops out of the House Speaker race. Does this mean Jim Jordan is back in the picture? Jordan was briefly the frontrunner before Scalise emerged as the candidate preferred by a majority of Republican House members, and Jordan was also endorsed by Donald Trump. Update: Yep, it’s Jordan.
Even House Democrats are slamming The Squad for their anti-Israel/pro-Hamas bias.
A revolt against government policies that many say usurp parental authority is spreading across the nation—especially in blue states where lawmakers have promoted transgender ideology and “gender-affirming care”—according to parents, attorneys, and teachers.
For more than a year, California parents have shown up in droves at legislative hearings and phoned in by the hundreds to protest policies that encourage schools to keep social gender transitions of children secret. Teachers also have begun to refuse to hide information about a child’s gender identity from parents.
Meanwhile, Democratic members of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus have spearheaded legislation supporting so-called gender-affirming care, especially for children, touting it as a “first-in-the-nation” model.
Parental rights groups such as Our Duty have pushed back against the model, while groups such as Planned Parenthood, Equality California, and others support it.
California school districts claim that they’re required by law to keep gender transitions secret from parents unless a child wants to tell his or her parents. But recent court rulings tell a different story.
A federal judge on Sept. 14 blocked California’s Escondido Union School District from punishing two teachers who refused to comply with guidance issued by the California Department of Education that encourages educators to keep gender transitions of students secret from their parents.
The People’s Republic of California is getting ready to declare war on classic cars. “California is looking seriously at instituting, or allowing local governments to institute, zero emission zones in the near future. In preparation for such a move, the California Air Resources Board (or CARB) is reportedly gathering information about classic cars.”
Federal prosecutors announced that an El Paso woman received a prison sentence of more than seven years after admitting to impersonating immigration agents to swindle money from “undocumented noncitizen victims and their family members.”
The Department of Justice (DOJ) stated that 53-year-old Ana Maria Hernandez pleaded guilty in April to 10 counts of wire fraud and one count of impersonation. Prosecutors say she pretended to be an official with Citizenship and Immigration Services and promised victims she could help them acquire American citizenship and collected fees.
Poor construction in illegal alien-populated Colony ridge is affecting Harris County water. “Harris County Commissioner Tom Ramsey (R-Pct. 3) warned his fellow commissioners on Tuesday that improper drainage construction in Colony Ridge was causing erosion and excessive silt to wash downstream into the county’s main source of drinking water.”
Follow-up: Josh Kruger, the recently-murdered gay left wing journalist who taunted conservatives, has been accused of grooming his accused killer from age 15. “The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the family of Kruger’s alleged killer, 19-year-old Robert Davis, says Kruger began a years-long relationship involving drugs that began when Davis was just 15-years-old. Davis remains at large.”
Every single donation sent by Christianity Today staffers went to Democrats.
Below is the tip jar, if you’re so inclined. Thanks to everyone who donated to the Non-Homeless Blogger Fund. I’m bad at thanking people individually the way I should, but let me know if you want public recognition in this space or not.
Greetings, and welcome to a Christmas Eve Eve LinkSwarm! It got down to 14°F yesterday, and only up to a balmy 30°F or so today. In addition to trying to stay warm, I’ve been working finishing up my latest Lame Excuse Books catalog, which went out earlier this evening. (Drop me a line if you want a copy.) Due to that, I think I’m going to break this LinkSwarm into two parts.
House passes pork-filled omnibus spending bill that 18 Republican senators let escape the senate. The amount of bad stuff in here will probably require multiple links tomorrow…
Gov. Gavin Newsom, newly inaugurated Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and legislative leaders are pledging decisive action on California’s homelessness crisis, which raises a pithy question: Why did it erupt during a period of strong economic growth?
The reasons often offered include a moderate climate, the availability of generous welfare benefits, mental health and drug abuse. However, a lengthy and meticulously sourced article in the current issue of Atlantic magazine demolishes all of those supposed causes.
Rather, the article argues persuasively, California and other left-leaning states tend to have the nation’s most egregious levels of homelessness because they have made it extraordinarily difficult to build enough housing to meet demands.
Author Jerusalem Demsas contends that the progressive politics of California and other states are “largely to blame for the homelessness crisis: A contradiction at the core of liberal ideology has precluded Democratic politicians, who run most of the cities where homelessness is most acute, from addressing the issue.
“Liberals have stated preferences that housing should be affordable, particularly for marginalized groups … But local politicians seeking to protect the interests of incumbent homeowners spawned a web of regulations, laws, and norms that has made blocking the development of new housing pitifully simple.”
Demsas singles out Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area as examples of how environmentalists, architectural preservationists, homeowner groups and left-leaning organizations joined hands to enact a thicket of difficult procedural hurdles that became “veto points” to thwart efforts to build the new housing needed in prosperous “superstar cities.”
While thriving economies drew workers to these regions, their lack of housing manifested itself in soaring rents and home prices that drove those on the lower rungs of the economy into homelessness.
Benjamin Netanyahu manages to form new government in Israel. It only took two months since the election!
Mayor Adler’s legacy in Austin:
I just came home today from a 4 day business trip in Austin. Homeless and drug addicts were everywhere. Girls looked like guys, guys looked like girls. In my hotel last night I was woken 3 times from separate bouts gunfire. What happened to this great city?
Over the weekend, a massive caravan of thousands of illegal migrants, mostly from Nicaragua, crossed the border into West Texas in a stunning surge that shocked immigration agents, neighboring towns, and state officials.
By Monday, over 5,000 illegal immigrants had arrived at the Border Patrol’s central processing center in El Paso, Texas, officials told the New York Times. They estimated that about 2,000 people came to the U.S. each day, with the largest influx reaching 800 to 1,000 migrants on Sunday night.
State Senator César J. Blanco, who represents the region, argued that the situation is untenable, with El Paso, a community with limited capacity, being forced to accommodate scores of migrants regularly.
“We’re feeling it. It’s straining resources,” he told the publication, noting that El Paso has functioned as an Ellis Island but for illegal immigration. “Whether we want it or not, it is.”
El Paso’s predicament, which included 53,000 apprehensions in October alone, is the worst among U.S.-Mexico border towns, although all are bearing the brunt of the raging border crisis. So far in 2022, there have been 2,378,944 migrant encounters along the southern border, according to immigration data.
Homeless shelters in El Paso are flooded, as is the processing center, which typically releases the migrants into the interior with instruction to return for a future court date, which many do not oblige.
It’s obvious that the Biden Administration wants to cram as many illegal aliens as possible into America to amnesty them as future Democratic Party voters.
But how parochial do you have to be to call El Paso a “town”? I’m pretty sure nobody on the NRO staff would call Yonkers, NY or Worcester, MA (both considerably smaller municipalities) a “town.”
Maybe they just listened to Marty Robbins’ “El Paso” (“Out in the West Texas town of El Paso/I fell in love with a Mexican girl”) and didn’t realize how much it had grown since the cowboy heydays…
Democrats flee, lettuce wins, a flood of extra executives, and Musk gets out the hatchet. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
People leaving the Democratic Party describe it as cancer:
While Democrat voters have been leaving the party for years, their reasons have become more urgent.
“When people were feeling pushed away years ago, to the point where they were starting to walk away, there was more of a casual tone about it,” former liberal Democrat Brandon Straka, founder of #WalkAway told The Epoch Times.
“People were beginning to feel the effects of leftist, communism, Marxism infiltration into our society, our culture, and our politics.”
Straka founded #WalkAway in 2018 after making his personal decision to leave the party public while inviting others to join him. Since then, thousands of exiting Democrats made social media videos explaining why they were choosing to #WalkAway, giving Straka a window into the minds of these voters.
At that time, people were just noticing changes in the party, he said. They weren’t always identifying what it meant, but they knew they didn’t like how it felt, and quietly left.
“But now, it’s akin to cancer. Cancer doesn’t stop growing and spreading just because people don’t like it. And what’s happening with the left is no different,” Straka said. “Particularly with them getting rid of Trump, installing Biden, and the Democrats taking full control of the government. This is a cancer that’s rapidly growing and spreading now. And it’s becoming not just uncomfortable, but I think intolerable, for a lot of people.”
Drugs dealers openly selling on Broadway. Thinks to mayors Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams, and the feckless actions of Soros-backed DA Alvin Bragg, Democrats have undone not only all the hard-won law-and-order gains of Rudy Giuliani’s broken windows police, but they’ve actually brought NYC back to the nadir of the crime-ridden New York of the 1970s. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke is heading to his third high-profile defeat in five years. But he and Planned Parenthood have an ace of their sleeve: registering dead voters.
A Texas firearms dealer is suing the Biden administration for weaponizing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to shut down law-abiding gun retailers over paperwork errors discovered during audits.
President Joe Biden ordered the Department of Justice in June of 2021 to enforce “zero tolerance for willful violations of the law by federally licensed firearms dealers that put public safety at risk,” but after a 500 percent increase in federal firearm license revocations for retailers over the last year, it’s clear the Biden administration isn’t just going after gun sellers who intentionally violate the law.
Punishing minor slip-ups, the lawsuit argues, draws on a drastically different interpretation of the law than the definition federal courts have held based on the Gun Control Act of 1968.
The lawsuit, to which the federal government has 60 days to respond, also argues that the Biden administration’s new policy sets an unreasonably high standard that is not applied to any other industry.
That’s why Michael Cargill, owner of Central Texas Gun Works in Austin, chose to bring this case.
Those energy-hostile Democratic Party policies just keep paying dividends: “New England facing natural gas shortages, rolling blackouts this winter.”
The reality is that the normal flow of natural gas into the region is limited and has been unable to keep up with increasing demand levels over the past decade. That means that utility operators have to rely on liquid natural gas (LNG) imports to make up the difference during peak demand periods. During such times, LNG accounts for as much as one-third of the total natural gas used for heating and electricity.
But why is that? You won’t need an ace detective to figure that out. Utility companies in New York, Connecticut, and other New England states projected supply shortfalls more than a decade ago. Fortunately, New York and Pennsylvania sit on some of the richest natural gas resources in the country, found in the Marcellus shale deposits. The companies requested new, higher-volume pipelines to carry natural gas to meet the spiraling demands of New York City, particularly at the furthest end of the gas lines in Long Island. They also urged the development of local gas production to feed those lines. Similar situations were noted all across New England.
Instead of doing that, New York refused to approve new gas lines and passed a moratorium on natural gas drilling in the state. This brings us to the current situation where the same amount of natural gas is being used, but increasing amounts of it come in the form of LNG that has to be imported either from other regions of the country or from overseas. The energy crunch in Europe is eating up a lot of the available LNG, so there may not be enough for New England this winter.
A star reporter for ABC News has been missing since an April 27 FBI raid at his Arlington, Virginia apartment.
Emmy award winner James Gordon Meek – a deep-dive journalist who was also a former senior counterterrorism adviser and investigator for the House Homeland Security Committee, abruptly quit his job of 9 years and “fell off the face of the earth,” after the raid, one of his colleagues told Rolling Stone.
A recent proliferation of phony executive profiles on LinkedIn is creating something of an identity crisis for the business networking site, and for companies that rely on it to hire and screen prospective employees. The fabricated LinkedIn identities — which pair AI-generated profile photos with text lifted from legitimate accounts — are creating major headaches for corporate HR departments and for those managing invite-only LinkedIn groups.
Last week, KrebsOnSecurity examined a flood of inauthentic LinkedIn profiles all claiming Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) roles at various Fortune 500 companies, including Biogen, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Hewlett Packard.
Since then, the response from LinkedIn users and readers has made clear that these phony profiles are showing up en masse for virtually all executive roles — but particularly for jobs and industries that are adjacent to recent global events and news trends.
Does the Federal Reserve swapping some $6 billion worth of dollars for Swiss Francs with the Swiss National Bank mean a global financial crisis is coming? Boiling down his argument: A.) The Swiss National bank has a weekly dollar auction every Wednesday. 99%+ of the time, no one shows up for them. B.) Last Wednesday, 15 parties (meaning banks) showed up for them to the tune of some $6 billion. C.) The only reason they would do that is if they don’t trust their current repo counterparties, and D.) This is what happened when Flu Manchu hit and before the Subprime Meltdown in 2008. If it’s any consolation, they first started showing up for the latter in December of 2007, so you might have nine months to buy gold, ammunition and canned goods…
“According to the latest campaign finance reports, Republican Alexandra del Moral Mealer has raised a record-setting $4.9 million dollars in support of her campaign for Harris County Judge, outraising Democratic incumbent Lina Hidalgo 4 to 1.”
Related: “Hidalgo Booed Exiting Meeting Where GOP Commissioners Continue Boycott of Tax Increase.”
Woke reporter: Are you just super excited to coach against another black coach? Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles: “We don’t see color…the minute you guys stop making a big deal about it, everyone else will as well.”
A petition to remove El Paso District Attorney (DA) Yvonne Rosales was approved by Odessa Judge Tyron D. Lewis on Wednesday. The information was confirmed by defense attorney Omar Carmona, who originally filed the petition on August 24.
Rosales, a Democrat, has been in office since she was elected in 2020, taking over for 30-year DA Jaime Esparza, also a Democrat.
The petition for removal comes on the heels of claims of “official misconduct” and “incompetence.” Both of these allegations are grounds for removal under Texas Local Government Code 87.
Rosales is overseeing the capital murder trial of Patrick Crusius, who killed 23 people at an El Paso Walmart in 2019. Crusius’ trial is set for 2024.
The petition accuses Rosales of ”mishandling” of the mass murder trial. Two key prosecutors, Assistant District Attorney John Briggs and Special Prosecutor Monica Barron-Auger, were removed from their positions on August 22.
The DA’s office released a statement on the matter that reads, “Following recent events, a change was necessary. We wish Mr. Briggs the best.”
Rosales also came under fire from District Court Judge Sam Medrano after she informed the Dallas Morning News of a trial date. Following this, the judge issued a gag order on Rosales and everyone involved in the case, saying, “This case is not going to be tried in the media but will be tried in a court of law.”
“Never in my 26 years on the bench, have I had to resort to the order that I have this morning entered in this case.”
Medrano also berated her for not doing enough to prosecute the case, stating, “The record should reflect that since you took office, not one pleading, not one motion, not one request, not one business record, not one proposed jury questionnaire, not one subpoena duces tecum, not one witness list, not one expert witness list has been filed by your office.”
The petition echoes the concern raised by Medrano, asserting, “Rosales publicly commented that she will continue to prepare for a trial in less than one year, while at the same time agreeing that new attorneys would be hired to litigate the case.”
“This implies that these new attorneys have not set their eyes on one iota of evidence.”
Rosales is also accused by the petitioners of being soft on crime during her tenure as DA. “In Rosales’ first year as District Attorney,” the petition reads, “she filed approximately 60 percent fewer felony and misdemeanor charges against alleged abusers, despite an overall rise in family violence arrests within the city of El Paso.”
Connected to this, the petition also cites the recent dismissal of hundreds of cases due to the DA’s office not charging individuals for crimes.
Normally when I see this sort of story break, I assume that the DA in question is backed by George Soros, which in Texas typically takes the form of the Texas Justice & Public Safety PAC. But in this case I can’t manage to track down the connection. Rosales is not a selectable option on the El Paso campaign finance reports page, and the Texas Ethics Commission page only brings up reports for 2021-2022, which doesn’t help for the 2020 election.
If you have concrete evidence of any Soros entity backing Rosales, feel free to share them in the comments below.
Former nanny, warez-trader, would-be punk rock star, El Paso City Councilman, three-term U.S. Representative, magazine cover boy, and losing 2018 U.S. Senate candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke is now a former Presidential candidate.
Our campaign has always been about seeing clearly, speaking honestly, and acting decisively.
In that spirit: I am announcing that my service to the country will not be as a candidate or as the nominee. https://t.co/8jrBPGuX4t
O’Rourke’s rise was quick, and his fall was even quicker. Backed by family wealth and political connections, Bobby Francis became Beto and successfully primaried a Democratic incumbent in a district that hasn’t voted for a Republican since 1962, where he spent three largely undistinguished terms before running against Ted Cruz for the Senate in 2018.
The senate race is what fueled O’Rourke’s rise to national prominence. Though supported by national Democrats’ absolute hatred for Cruz, O’Rourke brought real strengths to the race. First and foremost, he did the work, campaigning hard all across the state with a grueling personal appearance schedule that rivaled similar hard work put in by Cruz in his winning 2012 race. He also built out a competent campaign infrastructure and a national fund-raising apparatus to channel in the huge sums of cash national Democrats were throwing into the race. (O’Rourke raised more money than any senate candidate ever.) “Competent campaigning and fundraising” may seem like tepid praise, but it was more than any statewide Democrat had accomplished in two decades. (Wendy Davis had gotten similar fawning press coverage and solid out-of-state money, but ran a manifestly incompetent campaign.) And he was photogenic.
All of which lead to O’Rourke receiving some of the most fawning national campaign coverage for a statewide race ever seen. National magazine after national magazine showered rose petals of praise on O’Rourke from on-high. They were so predictable you could construct a checklist of the elements included. Skateboard? Check. Punk rock? Check. Sweaty? Check. “Kennedy-esque good looks”? Check.
O’Rourke lost, but he made the race a lot closer than it should have been, and dragged a lot of down-ballot Democrats into office on his coattails in a “wavelet” year for Democrats fired up in opposition to the Trump Administration. O’Rourke picked up more votes for a Democrat than any race in Texas ever. But a side effect was helping Republicans hold onto the senate, with several Democratic incumbents (Florida’s Bill Nelson, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, Missouri’s Claire McCaskill, and North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp) going to down to defeat in winnable races that didn’t receive nearly a fraction of the resources thrown at O’Rourke.
All of which naturally fueled talk of O’Rourke running for President. As I said in the very first clown car roundup, “I don’t see any reason for him not to run, with high favorables, strong polling and having just received a zillion fawning national media profiles.” He came in third behind Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in a November 2018 preference poll of candidates, and he was Daily Kos’ second-ranked straw poll candidate behind Elizabeth Warren. And he had a huge fundraising list from his Senate run. So there were several factors that made O’Rourke’s run entirely logical.
Yet he dithered, and hemmed, and hawed, letting a dozen other candidate get the jump on him into the race, before finally launching with yet another fawning national media profile, this one in Vanity Fair, complete with Annie Leibovitz photographs, that endlessly talked about his youth and charisma.
Then he got out on the national campaign trail, where mainstream media outlets had already lined up behind candidates like Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren as their preferred favorites, and the nation found out what Texas conservatives had been saying all along: O’Rourke is a big bag of nothing. All the qualities that the media found “endearing” and “authentic” were now goofy and eminently mockable. The flaws were always there.
Quick, name a single signature issue O’Rourke stood out from other candidates on. Until his disasterous “I’m gonna grab your guns” moment, there wasn’t any. Warren was the candidate that wanted to socialize healthcare; O’Rourke was the candidate that Instagrammed his dental visit. The more a national audience saw of him the less they liked him. The harder he pandered to the hard left the more phony he seemed and the softer his poll numbers, racking up some perfect “0.0” scores, where not a single person polled planned to vote for him.
Faced with an obviously failing campaign, O’Rourke made the decision to pull the plug. That was the right decision, but I’m slightly surprised he made it, since his $3 million cash on hand was probably enough to coast into Iowa and New Hampshire with something resembling a functional campaign on one last roll of the dice. But maybe shorn of his protective media glow, O’Rourke was finally able to read the writing on the wall. The question is when the half-dozen other candidates in the race doing even worse than O’Rourke drop out.
Who does his departure help? Given how minimal his remaining support was, probably no one. An earlier O’Rourke exit might have helped Julian Castro snag additional Texas funding, but his campaign has been flatlined for a while.
O’Rourke was a deeply flawed candidate, but I suspect he might have peaked higher and lasted longer if he’d jumped into the race right after the senate race loss. By the time he finally got in, his buzz had already died and a lot of higher profile candidate had locked up funding and campaign talent before he could. I think he still would have lost, but he might have gone out in a big bang rather than a whimper.
There’s something weirdly appropriate about the fake Hispanic candidate ending his campaign on the Day of the Dead.
Ah, the good ol’ days of . . . April, or so, when conservative critics of the Democratic party could still count on being lectured to about the enduring moderation of Team Blue and chastised for paying so much attention to such figures as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (a member of the Democratic Socialists of America) and Senator Bernie Sanders (a member of the Democratic Socialists of America) and claiming that these self-described socialists are the socialists they describe themselves as being, who want to “abolish capitalism” (the stated mission of the Democratic Socialists of America) and the traditional family to boot (“democratizing the family to get rid of patriarchal relations,” in the words of the Democratic Socialists of America), all of which, the usual media scolds tut-tutted, was unfair. “The Democratic party is the party of moderates,” as Politico magazine editor Bill Scher argued.
Somebody must have slipped some psilocybin into the Democrats’ potato salad at this year’s May Day picnic. Open borders? Check! Eviscerating the Bill of Rights? Absolutely, with one of those weird barbed Uncle Henry gut-hook knives! What else? I hope that whichever debate moderator finally presses this crew about the limits of late-term abortion is over 35, because Elizabeth Warren was pretty clearly ready to roll up her sleeves and perform an impromptu D&E right there underneath the Art Deco adornments and heavy brocade curtains of the Fox Theater in beautiful downtown Detroit.
Speaking of the Democratic Socialists of America, Stephen Green looks in on those lunatics. “No perfume in the quiet room, no misusing doors, no talking to cops, no talking to the press, always display your credentials, beware of right wing infiltrators.” Plus the usual lunacy about pronouns, and triggering, and singing “The Internationale.”
Monthly apprehensions of migrants in Mexico have begun to slow down, indicating that its government’s recent border crackdown is yielding results.
Authorities in Mexico apprehended 18,758 migrants in July, according to preliminary data from Mexico’s immigration agency, reported by The Wall Street Journal. While this number is more than double the amount detained in the same month last year, it is a decline from the record-setting 31,573 apprehensions in Mexico in June.
“China Wants to Hit Back at Trump. Its Own Economy Stands in the Way.”
China’s imports from the United States only a fraction of the trade going the other way, so it cannot match Washington tariff for tariff. Much of that trade consists of agriculture goods like soybeans, as well as specialized products like Boeing jetliners or the American-made chips for the smartphones China makes.
There are several things China could do. It could call for a boycott of American goods or stop buying Boeing planes. It could devalue its currency, which would in effect partially nullify American tariffs. It could make life much harder for American business and executives in China, or it could exercise its power over key parts of the global supply chain, like its dominance over key manufacturing minerals called rare earths.
Some investors on Friday signaled they expect at least one of those moves. China’s currency, the renminbi, fell to its weakest point so far this year. Shares of rare earths companies rose, while Boeing’s shares fell more than the broader market on Thursday.
But each of these measures has drawbacks. Perhaps the biggest among them is that China’s economy is growing at its slowest pace in 27 years. Many of the arrows Beijing has in its quiver could ricochet and hit its own factories and workers.
Plus the perils of weakening the renminbi. Also: “As they consider their moves, Chinese officials will also try to parse Mr. Trump’s negotiating strategy. Experts said his capricious style had flummoxed Beijing.”
The manifesto is insane. Part of it discussed commonly debated issues such as the environment and the economy in ways that are well within the boundaries of political conversation going on today — indeed, that might have come out of the New York Times or many other outlets. Other parts of it mixed in theories on immigration from far right circles in Europe and the U.S. Then it threw in beliefs on “race-mixing” straight from the fever swamps. And then it concluded that the solution is to murder Hispanic immigrants, going on to debate whether an AK-47 or an AR-15 would best do the job. By that point, Crusius had veered far from both reality and basic humanity.
But the question is, was he inspired by President Trump? It is hard to make that case looking at the manifesto in its entirety.
Crusius worried about many things, if the manifesto is any indication. He certainly worried about immigration, but also about automation. About job losses. About a universal basic income. Oil drilling. Urban sprawl. Watersheds. Plastic waste. Paper waste. A blue Texas. College debt. Recycling. Healthcare. Sustainability. And more. Large portions of the manifesto simply could not be more un-Trumpian.
This is a colossal fraud, and it won’t work. The public doesn’t buy it; the candidates aren’t talking about it; when Congress returns in September, Lindsey Graham’s Senate Judiciary Committee will grill the authors of the politicization of the intelligence agencies, the FBI, and other parts of the Obama Justice Department as well as the propagators of the false Steele dossier and the fraudulent FISA warrant applications. Graham (R-S.C.), will get the publicity, and the bare-faced liars who chair the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), will be talking to themselves about their “solid evidence” of the president’s crimes. Weissman and the lesser Democratic Torquemadas couldn’t find them; Nadler and Schiff can’t declare what their evidence is (because there is none).
This is the last echo of this attempted rape of the Constitution and no one will be listening when the Congress returns in September. They will listen to the Graham committee’s exposés of the Democrats who acted corruptly, and they will notice the indictments when the special counsel, (John Durham, who unlike Mueller does have full retention of his faculties), starts bringing them down.
The president deliberately has escalated the controversy by attempting to make the four extremist freshman Democratic congresswomen the real face of the Democrats, and by pointing out, in the case of Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the inappropriateness of Cummings’ assault on the integrity of the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
The president undoubtedly knows that he is playing with fire assaulting the most holy of the taboos of political correctness so explicitly, though his grasp of the political arithmetic is almost certainly correct. I assume he can reassure his own followers and whatever independent voters may be left in this fierce partisan crossfire that he is not racist. In sober times, it would be clear that no case whatever exists that he is a racist. But these are not sober times and he has contributed something to their insobriety, though—one must remember—in reaction to immense provocations.
Last year, cops in MD serving a red flag removal order, killed a 61 year old man who got upset when they came for his guns. He was flagged because his sister called after they had a political disagreement. These “laws” will continue to be abused like this. https://t.co/rc09rEAuh0
Active shooters are a rounding error. “If you feel the need to take training to protect your life and the lives of your loved ones, take a Defensive Driving Course.” (Hat tip: Karl Rehn.)
“AT&T employees took bribes to plant malware on the company’s network. DOJ charges Pakistani man with bribing AT&T employees more than $1 million to install malware on the company’s network, unlock more than 2 million devices.”
But here’s the part that blew my mind: I started to lose weight. Before the detox I weighed 166 pounds. Twelve weeks later, I hit a new low adult weight: 155. I’ve cinched in my belt a notch. My bloodwork looks much better (my triglycerides dropped by half in six weeks). And as my belly fat has reduced, I do feel better and more energetic.
The weight-loss and triglyceride reduction mirrors my own experience when I first went on Atkins.
New York Times revenues continue to decline. I’m sure that somehow this is all Russia’s fault…
Leftwing protestors call for the murder of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Naturally Twitter suspended the account…of his reelection campaign, for showing videos of leftwing protestors calling for his murder:
Here are the messages that McConnell's re-election campaign received from Twitter telling them that they could not expose the hatred coming from the Democrat Party directed at McConnell pic.twitter.com/sECCRXRYYd
What use is April Fools Day when there are so many fools to choose from? That aside, Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam is In, while Biden continues his Hamlet routine. (Given what last week’s Mueller-Avenatti-Smollett smashup was like, I don’t really blame him anyone for not launching their campaign last week.) Eric Swalwell was do disappointed by the Mueller report that he’s going to run for President to ease the pain, sort of like sawing off your own leg to make you forget a toothache. There’s a little Buttigieg boomlet going on. And with the quarter just ended, fundraising totals are starting to trickle out.
Polls
A Quinnipiac national poll has it Biden 29, Sanders 19, O’Rourke 12, Harris 8, and Warren and Buttigieg in a distant fifth tied at 4% each. Most interesting tidbit? O’Roruke has double Harris’ support among black people, and ties it among women.
An Emerson Iowa poll had it Biden 25, Sanders 24, Buttigieg 11, Harris at 10, with Warren, Booker and O’Rourke trailing in single digits.
America’s youngest voters prefer the oldest 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls over those closer to them in age, and millennial women are showing little problem with former Vice President Joe Biden’s personally touchy style that has drawn the scorn of some #MeToo champions, according to a new survey.
The Harvard Youth Poll found that Sen. Bernie Sanders, 77, and Biden, 76, top the choices of voters aged 18-29.
Sanders leads Biden 31 percent to 20 percent, said the survey from the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy’s School.
Notably, one of the youngest Democratic candidates, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, registered just 10 percent. But that makes him the third top choice of the younger voters.
Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams: Maybe? “Stacey Abrams builds massive political network ahead of 2020 decision.” “Stacey Abrams is set to reveal soon whether she’ll run for president or senator or something else. But in recent months, the Democrat has mounted a nationwide, largely below-the-radar effort to expand her donor and political network that will make her an instant force whatever she decides.” She also ruled out preemptively agreeing to be Biden’s VP.
Joe Biden is a creepy old goat. Everyone knows this. There is much photographic evidence of him crossing the line with women. He’s also a liar and a buffoon. But the Democratic party’s public-relations arm, aka the mainstream media, has never before had any incentive to hold Biden up to scrutiny. Why bother? When he became veep, any attack on Biden risked looking like casting aspersions on the man who made him his number two, and the media could not countenance any naysaying about the judgment of the Precious.
Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Facebook. He was in Ft. Dodge, Iowa. Back in January, Jim Geraghty noted: “Julián Castro was the candidate of tomorrow, and always will be.” It also included this tidbit:
In 2012, Rosie Castro caused her son a bit of a headache when she told The New York Times Magazine that the Texans at the Alamo were “a bunch of drunks and crooks and slaveholding imperialists who conquered land that didn’t belong to them…I can truly say that I hate that place and everything it stands for.” It’s not often you see a mayor’s mother trashing the city’s most famous historical site.
Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Out.
Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Tulsi Gabbard Says It’s Time to ‘Move Forward’ After Trump-Russia Investigation.” “Now that Mueller has reported that his investigation revealed no such collusion, we all need to put aside our partisan interests and recognize that finding that the president of the United States did not conspire with Russia to interfere with our elections is a good thing for our country.” Yeah, I bet that stance is going to make her super popular among Democratic primary voters…
Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Senate candidate Andrew Gillum: Probably not. “Unless somebody I know who inspires me on a regular basis decides to do something else, he’d be focusing all his energy on getting Florida voters registered and turning the state blue in 2020.” Downgrade from Maybe.
California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter. Facebook. Harris is popular with her California constituents…but not super-popular, and the state doles out delegates proportionally. Interestingly, left-leaning PolitiFact said that her assertion that President Trump was raiding money from soldier pensions was false. And speaking of Jussie Smollett:
I’m so excited that @KamalaHarris has decided to run for president. I would not be where I am today without her guidance during my first run for political office, and she has continued to mentor me as I work to reform the criminal justice system in Cook County. —KF pic.twitter.com/O241FGKKMs
Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine: Out.
Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry: Not seeing any sign.
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar: In. Facebook. Twitter. She visited Iowa to check out flooding damage. “There are half a dozen Democrats running for president who fill VFW halls or city squares or public parks. Klobuchar is not one of those Democrats. Her audiences are rapt and curious but small. Her Friday night visit to Council Bluffs, which took place in the same venue and time of day as Warren’s first visit to the city, attracted 75 people.” She also unveiled an very expensive infrastructure plan. How expensive?
In the first speech of his presidential campaign, Miramar Mayor Wayne Messam on Saturday said he’s aiming to “give Americans a second chance at the American Dream.”
The 44-year-old son of Jamaican immigrants said his top priorities are greatly reducing gun violence and preventing mass shootings, eliminating college loan debt, reversing harmful climate change, and rebuilding ties with America’s allies across the planet.
“We will meet this challenge,” Messam told the crowd at the Lou Rawls Center for the Performing Arts at Florida Memorial University in Miami Gardens. He used the “Black Panther” movie song “Pray for Me” as his theme music.
With all of five thousand twitter followers, Messam takes the longest of longshots crown from John Delaney. However, as a black mayor with a compelling personal story, the media will be unable to ignore him as they’ve largely ignored Delany, no matter how much Harris and Booker campaigns might wish they would. And the inevitable Obama comparisons won’t hurt, though I don’t see him having anything near that magnetism. Florida’s primary is March 17, fairly early but after Super Tuesday, and it’s possible that Messam’s favorite son bid could make some noise there, especially if Gillum doesn’t jump into the race.
Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton: Maybe? Yet another guy who says he’ll decide in the next few weeks.
California Representative Eric Swalwell: All But In. He told an audience he was announcing in two weeks. Maybe he can spend his Presidential campaign looking for the real Russian colluders. (Upgrade from Maybe.)
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. She just lost her financing manager. “Her staff is sensitive enough about the “but can she win” concerns that last week it issued a lengthy campaign memo, in the guise of a fund-raising email, detailing her platform and resume while offering a reminder that she is the only candidate who in recent years has defeated a statewide Republican incumbent.” Yeah, in Massachusetts, which for a Democrat is like Kramer beating up 9-year olds in his karate class.
Say hello to Marianne Williamson, a best-selling author who has often been called Oprah Winfrey’s “spiritual guru.” Although she isn’t even a single-digit blip in the national polls, Ms. Williamson’s campaign has already been featured on ABC’s Nightline, and her campaign appearances in Iowa and New Hampshire have received respectful coverage in such local media as the Des Moines Register and the Concord Monitor. Her only previous foray into electoral politics was a fourth-place finish in a 16-candidate California congressional race in 2014, but Ms. Williamson seems to have learned a lot in the past five years. Her campaign website is state-of-the-art, her calendar of public appearances is carefully targeted toward the early primary and caucus states, and she has already hired state campaign directors in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. “We’re getting traction,” Williamson campaign spokeswoman Patricia Ewing told me in a brief telephone interview Thursday. “We’re very happy with it.”
Ms. Ewing said the campaign is “confident” Ms. Williamson will surpass the crucial metric of 65,000 unique donors that the Democratic National Committee has established as the threshold to participate in the first televised debates. She already has more than 25,000 donors, Ms. Ewings said. “It’s not a stress point for us at all. We know we’re going to hit the numbers by the time the DNC wants us to.” Ms. Williamson has spent more than 30 years making public appearances to promote her popular books and, before launching her current campaign, went on a 75-city national tour with an average of 500 people attending each event, Ms. Ewing said. Do the math, and that adds up to nearly 40,000 dedicated supporters. Given how easily an “outsider” candidate like Trump vanquished a field of Republican politicians in the 2016 primaries, it’s not impossible that Ms. Williamson could pull off a similar feat among Democrats in 2020. “We believe that a presidential candidate can come from someone who is not a career politician,” Ms. Ewing said. “Someone who has an understanding of the breadth and width of the country.”
For all the talk about the Religious Right’s role in Republican politics, little attention is paid to the influence among Democrats of the Religious Left, of which Ms. Williamson is a recognized leader. And if the odds against her winning her party’s 2020 presidential nomination are a million-to-one, there are nonetheless serious Democrats who believe she can achieve such a miracle. One of them is Dr. Gloria Bromell Tinubu, state director of the Williamson campaign. An experienced politician who served in the Georgia legislature before returning to her native South Carolina, Dr. Tinubu was twice the Democratic nominee for Congress in the 7th District, getting more than 100,000 votes against Republican Rep. Tom Rice in this deep “red” district. Dr. Tinubu introduced Ms. Williamson at Bethel A.M.E. by saying, “I consider her a sister,” which is about as strong an endorsement as any Democrat needs here.
Snip.
If the “Three B’s” (Biden, Bernie, and Beto) are Trump’s “dream” of a 2020 opponent, Ms. Williamson might just be his worst nightmare. Like him, she’s an outsider, a non-politician without the kind of political baggage that sank Hillary Clinton. And she brings to the campaign a spiritual vibe that could connect with swing voters. “Politics should not be a pursuit disconnected from the heart,” her campaign literature proclaims. “Where fear has been harnessed for political purposes, let’s now harness the power of love.” Sure, conservative readers will roll their eyes at that kind of emotional appeal, but what about suburban “soccer moms”? What about the millions of women who’ve bought Ms. Williamson’s books or seen her many TV appearances with Oprah? What about the congregation at Bethel A.M.E. that applauded Ms. Williamson’s call for reparations for slavery?
All the same pundits who confidently predicted Trump’s defeat would say it is impossible Ms. Williamson could win the Democrats’ 2020 nomination, and that’s the really spooky thing. We are living in a world where impossible things seem to be happening with remarkable frequency, and it’s foolish to say miracles never happen. How odd was it, after all, that Ms. Williamson was speaking Sunday from the pulpit of a black church in South Carolina? Not only is she white, she’s Jewish. (To quote New York Jewish Week: “Should she win the presidency, Williamson, 66, not only would be the first woman president but the first Jewish one.”) She mentioned the Jewish celebration of Purim, which commemorates Esther’s role in saving the Jews of Persia. She didn’t mention the famous question Mordecai asked of Esther: “Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Indeed, who knows? In such a time as this, perhaps Ms. Williamson could be the miracle that saves Democrats from themselves.
Welcome to another Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update! Amy Klobuchar is In, Mitch Landrieu is Probably Out, Elizabeth Warren gives a speech, and Biden is just biding his time.
Losing Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams: Out. She didn’t launch a campaign during her state of the union response, so I think we can safely assume she’s out.
Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: Learning toward In. “‘We’ve got a million people that are going to run, which I think is great,’ Bennet said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. But, he added, ‘I think having one more voice in that conversation that’s focused on America’s future, I don’t think would hurt.’ Bennet, 54, cast himself as a centrist Democrat who would bring business and managerial experience to the crowded field.”
Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown: Likely In. “It appears a presidential run from Sen. Sherrod Brown is gaining momentum with voters.” And he gave a speech in New Hampshire.
Former San Antonio Mayor and Obama HUD Secretary Julian Castro: In. Twitter. Are you interested in a piece on Castro’s foreign policy ideas from the Council on Foreign elations blog? Me neither, but here it is.
Former First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State and losing 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: Probably not. All quiet on the Clinton front this week. Those new Elder Signs must be working…
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo: Out.
New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio: Leaning toward In. Reportedly searching for staffers for a possible run, much to the horror of everyone around him. Upgrade from Maybe.
Former Tallahassee Mayor and failed Florida Senate candidate Andrew Gillum: Out.
California Senator Kamala Harris: In. Twitter feed. Tons of fawning in-the-tank MSM coverage omitted. But The Guardian wonders just how genuine Harris’ shift to the leftwing church of what’s happening now really is. Also, here’s more evidence that the establishment’s “in the tank for Harris”:
Hey @TwitterSupport. How do you see this as not a conflict of interest when the twitter platform is used for political discussion constantly? What measures do you have in place to ensure a fair platform? pic.twitter.com/cM3lqgOAmJ
Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder: Maybe. Has a speech scheduled in Iowa…but only one. Not seeing much activity, which begs the question: Is Holder not actively doing anything to support a possible run, or is the MSM freezing out mention of what he is doing to help clear the lane for Kamala Harris?
Washington Governor Jay Inslee: In. He’s running on climate change and gun control. Why not not just go ahead and adopt “Screw You, Middle America” as your campaign slogan?
Virginia Senator and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Vice Presidential running mate Tim Kaine: Out.
Former Obama Secretary of State and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry: Not seeing any sign.
Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton: Maybe? “U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, who was in New Hampshire last weekend amid speculation that he might run for president, will give a speech at the Brookings Institution next week where he plans to outline his ‘vision for the future of U.S foreign policy,’ according to his campaign.”
Former Texas Representative and failed Senatorial candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke: Maybe? In his talk with Oprah Winfrey, he says he’ll decide by the end of February. He’s giving an anti-border wall speech in El Paso the same time President Trump is giving his speech in El Paso. Dallas Morning News writer wonders: “Has he missed his window of opportunity?”
“It feels a little saturated at the moment,” said Brigham Hoegh, the Democratic chairwoman in Audubon County, in western Iowa. “Kamala [Harris] made a big show and looks really strong in the last couple of weeks. I feel like he could still jump in, but there’s a ton of people in the race that are getting attention. He hasn’t been top of the mind lately.”
New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez: Constitutionally ineligible to run in 2020.
Ohio Democratic Representative Tim Ryan: Maybe?. You know that Sherrod Brown speech in New Hampshire? Ryan had signage there. “Youngstown-area Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan’s smiling face greeted the crowd of 350 who showed up to hear Brown’s speech, part of his visit to the early-voting states in the presidential primary.” Might be nothing. Might be just Ryan jacking with another Ohio Democrat. But still an upgrade over “Doubtful.” Entrails cloudy, ask again later.
California Representative Eric Swalwell: Leaning toward In. Soon: “He has already added staff and offices in some key early states as he builds out a national campaign infrastructure.”
